House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank on Friday morning said that the economy is poised to “take off,” and that would help Democrats in 2012, but he acknowledged the political problems that the slow recovery is causing now.

The Massachusetts Democrat, speaking at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, offered a broad defense of the economic and banking policies put forth by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, and slammed Republicans for “budget gimmickry” that caused the very economic uncertainty they now blame on Democrats.

Without directly addressing his party's chance to hold onto the House, Frank said that “the odds of 2012 will be much better for Democrats than this one.”

“The public doesn’t grade on a curve,” Frank said of the lagging economy. “The public grades on the reality, especially when expectations had been raised.”

Frank, a 29-year veteran of Congress, blamed President Barack Obama for raising the public’s expectations on the economy when his economic team promised that unemployment wouldn drop below 9 percent if Congress passed the stimulus. He called it Obama’s “biggest mistake.”

“There was no reason to say that,” Frank said. “I told the people on my staff, ‘Why make a prediction? The answer is we’ll do the best we can.’”

Frank also said that Obama “overestimated” the ability to work with the “current Republican party,” and judged the president’s work on repealing don’t ask, don’t’ tell “good, not great, but clearly very good.”

The garrulous Frank, who helped pass the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP) and the sweeping financial regulatory overhaul, defended the federal government’s broad intervention in the economy, calling the auto bailout “the single most effective thing the federal government has done” to help bolster American manufacturing.

Frank struck a drastic tone on military spending, calling for a 20 percent reduction and blasting Republicans for what he called “military Keynesianism." Facing an angry conservative electorate himself, Frank also paid an unusual compliment to Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican elected to fill the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, calling him “one of the best technical candidates I’ve ever seen.”

“People were talking about Martha Coakley not running a good race, people don’t talk enough about the technically excellent campaign that Scott Brown did,” Frank said. “That is he took his own persona and played it up, and he was comfortable with it because it was really him.”

Brown won Frank’s district, which has emboldened Sean Bielat, a Republican from Brookline, Mass., who says Frank is “running scared.” Frank is bringing Bill Clinton to campaign for him Sunday in Taunton, Mass., but the chairman is calling it business as usual.

“There are three choices, I can not campaign at all, and be accused of being arrogant, which [Bielat] has earlier, he said I was so arrogant I wouldn’t campaign,” Frank said. “Or I could campaign the best I know how, or alternatively I could campaign ineffectively. I said I suppose instead of inviting Bill Clinton I could’ve invited Jimmy Carter.”